ever since launch i always have to start the game up more than once since the first time is just the loading circle in the bottom left and the frame rate in the top right. ctrl + alt + deleting out and closing is the only way to leave. it works fine after that. anyone know why

Bonus Question: the Serious achievement says to beat the game on "unmodified" serious difficulty. does that mean i can't press F2 to Customize anything? they let you do that for the first 2 games.

And see if you can delete a file called "SignatureCatalog" (DAT file) and verify your game cache by right clicking SS3 in your steam library>properties> and then Verify Game Cache... on what ever tab it is.

If that doesn't work, copy your Config folder in the same SeriousSam3 folder path i showed above, and paste it somewhere (desktop preferably) you will remember it. Delete the existing Config folder and verify the game cache again, allowing SS3 to download a default config settings file that may have been corrupted at one point.

If that works, then delete your old config folder on the desktop, but if not, then its not the culprit and if you want to keep your settings saved, put it back into the SeriousSam3 folder.

I know this sounds like a lot to do, but read it carefully, as it fixed my problem with a black screen, then crashing due to the Xaudio2 API in the game.